Sunday, June 17, 2012

Connectivism as Epistemology

Responding to questions from Vance McPherson

1) What is your response to Rita Kop's suggestion that connectivism is a new epistemology but not a new learning theory?

As I understand Rita, she understands the pedagogical aspects of
connectivism to have already been present in constructivism, and hence,
connectivism is not proposing something new when it comes to giving
guidance to instructional staff. There are overlaps to be sure, however:
- criticisms of a teaching practice, which may be grounded if working in
a constructivist perspective, are not grounded in a connectivist
environment. For example, I responded to criticisms from Heli Nurmi
several times in this fashion.
- there is a universalist aspect to constructivism that is not present
in connectivism; to be a 'theory' requires statements of general
principles of teaching, and connectivism mostly doesn't have these
- and related, constructivism depends on intention in a way connectivism
does not - it supposes that people are consciously building or
constructing knowledge, whereas in connectivism this is not required

Connectivism is *definitively* a learning theory, or more accurately,
incorporates learning theories (specifically, theories about how
connections are formed in networks). It suggests some teaching theories
(I have capsulized them as 'to teach is to model and demonstrate' and
suggested that connectivism argues for the creation of an immersive
learning environment).

But all of that said, whether connectivism is a *new* theory of
epistemology or pedagogy is irrelevant to me and I don't spend any time
worrying about it. I often preface my remarks with the sentence
"everything I have to say has been said (often better) by someone else."

2) My understanding of connectivism is currently as both
epistemology and learning theory, which presupposes that it has ALWAYS
been correct and is not contingent upon modern technological
developments to "work." Rather, technology casts light upon the nature
of the model. But many authors are suggesting that the application of
the learning theory is primarily to technology-based learning. What's
your take on this?

It has always been correct (insofar as it has components that say
anything is 'always' the case). Networks have always learned. Humans
have always been a network (at least, since graduating from
single-celled organisms).

Other aspects of the theory change over time. At the deepest level, the
principles for stable (dynamic, learning) networks - autonomy,
diversity, etc - are probably reasonably constant over different types
of networks.

But the sort of environments that create learning vary greatly - the
sort of environment that produces a modern information-age
knowledge-worker for example varies greatly from one which would produce
a skilled bow-maker in the middle ages.

Additionally, with the development of technology, new types of networks
have come into being. While human commerce has always formed a network,
it has been a relatively simple network and certainly a slow-moving one.
There's only so much connecting that can take place via personal
communication and the Royal Mail. Technology greatly accelerated the
size and speed of the human network, producing in a way not previously
possible more observable properties of a network (for example, cascade
phenomena as an idea or meme propagates through the network).

3) M. K. Dunaway (2011) recently published a paper in Reference
Services Review, where she describes connectivism as claiming that
knowledge emerges from an individual's learning network as connections
are recognized. If I'm understanding your position correctly, then
Dunaway's description is inaccurate in placing the locus of knowledge
with the individual learner's recognition patterns, and not in the
network itself. But I may also have not correctly understood you, her,
or both. Could you steer me straight on this?

I would have to read Dunaway to be able to provide a reasonable response - if you could link me to a copy that would be helpful.

That said - 'recognition' is a core thesis of my own theory. To 'know' x
is to be capable of *recognizing* 'x'. To recognize 'x' is to assume an
appropriate neural configuration when presented with an 'x', where
'appropriate' may be described in any variety of manners. I sometimes
talk of 'knowing' 'x' to having the right 'feeling' when represented
with 'x', a feeling of recognition. To 'recognize' is a property of a
successful network.

Additionally, networks exhibit patterns or regularities. For example, a
weather network may exhibit a characteristic 'storm front' or a
mumuration of blackbirds may display shapes in the air. In my own work I
often use examples like 'facves on a TV screen' or on the surface of
Mars. These patterns in a network are phenomena that exist *only* as
things that are recognized. To say a pattern 'x' exists in network 'y'
requires a perceiver 'P' presented with 'y' and who instantiates an
appropriate network state (a 'familiar feeling', a 'habitual reaction', a
'recognition') when presented with (a perspective of) 'x'.

4) I sometimes get the impression that you and George Siemens are
not exactly on the same page when it comes to the epistemological
aspects of connectivism, which of course would be perfectly fine in the
context of a dialogic process, but I wondered if you'd care to comment
on this.

George and I have our debates. My sense is that is is much more
concerned with the pedagogical aspects of connectivism while I am much
more interested in the epistemological aspects. Philosophically, George
is a realist while I am more of an idealist - that is to say, he is more
likely to say the phenomena we observe (be they chairs or colours or
shapes and movements) are 'real' while I (for reasons just stated) say
they require a perceiver.

One more thing, something of a comment. You've described
semiotic processes (language, symbols) as epiphenomena of networks, but
not essential to them. This reminds me a lot of Stephen Jay Gould's
idea of "spandrels." I thought it was interesting because one of Bill
Kerr's beefs with connectivism seems to be that there is not a good
evolutionary / biological explanation for how connectivism is possible.
But I think that, on the contrary, connectivism, if correct, would
prove conclusively Gould's spandrel hypothesis, which is widely accepted
in evolutionary biology circles. Just a thought.

I have described the patterns we perceive as supervenient on the
phenomena that produce them. So that does make them epiphenomenal in a
way.

The whole question of an evolutionary basis for connectivism is one I
have not considered. But I think there's a good basis for such an
argument. A network is at heart a recognition system; it responds in
consistent ways to complex and variable phenomena. It embodies the
capacity to adapt to change. The more complex an environment the more
likely that a network, rather than a simple innate instinct, would
ensure survival.

A language I think emerges quite naturally out of this. Given that
humans have the capacity to make noises and gestures, and that these
would be consistently produced given certain phenomena, it would not be
long before the adaptive advantage of communication ensured its
adoption. Most - if not all - of actual language is (in my mind)
learned. But there is no question that the networks we are born with at
birth are sensitive to the sounds and movements made by people like
ourselves.

That said: language (as an entity) is a *social* phenomenon, not a
personal phenomenon. Language is stigmergic. As Wittgenstein would say,
there is no private language. Not because of some 'private language
argument' (I think this is a recreation of Wittgenstein's thought after
the fact, and not core to what Wittgenstein had to say) but because the
properties of language - specific words (the associated sounds and
symbols, and conventional meaning or reference), grammars and syntax,
works in literature and art that constitute paradigms, etc. - are
physical phenomena, present out there in the world and not in the humans
that speak and write it.

Is language a spandral - an accidental artifact of evolution? In one
sense no - I think a look at language after the fact shows how important
it has been to survival. But in another sense no - it's not an artifact
of evolution at all, as it is not a property of individual humans.

But should investigation show a particular innate sensitivity to some
aspect of language - a 'mirror neuron for syntax', say, that might be a
spandral. That might be a selected preference for a particular aspect of
language that *could* have been different (you could have an equally
effective language without it) but was the way it was, and was selected
for. It might show up in the way, say, an innate preference for the
colour red might have - as an aid to identifying dangerous stuff in the
world, which in an alternative history could well have been blue or
green (think Vulcan) or whatever.

Good questions, interesting discussion, thanks. I will post these to my weblog, if you don't mind.

1 comment:

This discussion makes two distinctions that I find particularly useful. First, that connectivism as an epistemology is not contingent upon modern technological developments to "work." Second, that semiotic processes (language, symbols) [are] epiphenomena of networks, but not essential to them.

To my mind, knowing has always been a network phenomenon, and while, as Stephen notes, those networks have developed in terms of scale and speed and reach, they are still networks. The technology perhaps makes them more obvious to us today, or perhaps the task of manually constructing networks with wires and routers and computers helped us to see the networking that had always existed in reality.

Then, knowing is more than just language. My own field, rhetoric and composition, tends to view all knowledge as language-based. It's a bias that I don't think they can defend, and I think that connectivism may be able to shed real light on the whole-body, whole-culture nature of knowledge. If knowledge is a function of complex, multi-scale networks, then it is not limited to any single thing, such as language. For instance, I think a footballer's body knows without benefit of language or even the conscious brain when he's about to be tackled, and his body can act appropriately on its knowledge. Scientists have given ample accounts of the tingles of premonition and intuition that their bodies use to signal the rightness of an experiment even before the mind apprehends and can say it. Modeling and demonstrating are about the only ways I know to teach this kind of whole-body knowledge.